Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

I'm thinking of cooking one next weekend before my big trip

 

1) You obviously are a very good cook, being able to pull that off. Kudos for sure.
2) I was more or less trying to say that *usually* the food you produce can only be as good as the limitations of ingredient quality. There's always a weak link. With smoking, things are a bit easier because there's not as many ingredients (although stale rub can throw everything off whack badly), but for anybody near beginner stage especially, the best ingredients they can afford would probably (likely) turn out better results. A ninja like you knows how to work around a lot of limitations, obviously. Which is great

 

Definitely quality has alot to do with it. I've learned "freshness" is the biggest factor for me. My OCD kicks in when it comes to previous frozen food. When it comes to comps, it can go either way. IMO, comp food is gross. It's nothing what you would cook in the backyard. Most of the judges are just people who took a 4hr judging class and don't even own a grill. Still a good excuse to hang out around the pits all night and drink a lot of good beer

 

This... That's why I have a hard time with contests. No one can tell me what tastes better to me.

 

Frozen food OCD, me too, bad. It's a huge detriment to saving money. I have the dedicated freezer, but there's nothing in it but a few chicken breasts and frozen pizza I *want* to use it, but I have a huge hangup that the meat will not be as good.

 

You must not hunt

 

Correct. If I did, I know I'd have to get over that quick. I have buddies who hunt, and it's not at all an option to not freeze.

 

Turn it into a keggerator. Those chicken breasts and pizza belong in your kitchen freezer.

 

Got my pork butt on the smoker about an hour ago! I am addicted to my smoker and it's been 3 weeks since I've been able to do a cook. I'm stoked to sit out in the garage tonight, listen to some music, tend to the smoker and drink some ice cold beer = my therapy. I've mainly been perfecting ribs and this is my second pork butt. The first one I cooked hit stall and the weather was going to hell so I brought it in and my impatient wife wouldn't let me cook it as long as need so it came out kind of mealy. Hoping this one turns out better. I'm anticipating 8-10 hours at 250 for a 5.5# butt. Going to wrap it when the fat cap states to crack and let it go till 190-200*.

 

A 5lbs shouldn't even come close to taking that long. Once it hits the stall. Wrap it and add a splash of apple or white grape juice and dust it with your rub. Make sure you wrap it super tight. You don't want to steam it. It will taste like ham. Place it fat cap up and let it go to 190-195 at the money muscle. Unwrap and put your sauce on and take it to 200. If no sauce, keep it wrapped to 197-200. Once you yank it, vent it down to 175 and then wrap in clean foil then a towel and drop in to cooler for an hour or so. Love the side box vent mode as well. Most people miss that one. Have fun

 

Converted freezers are called keezers. Here's one my brother converted.

 

Initial burn off....

 

Baby backs!

 

That looks way cool! Only bummer would be adding coals, but once you got good you could get enough dead ones under the live ones to have it go for 10 hours at least, I'd guess.

 

I'm at 5 hours now and the internal temperature is about 155. Going to let it run for another 30 minutes and check it. Going to wrap it at 160 and let it go till 200. That's at an average temperature of 250.

On the mods: The downspout really helped things out and the cookie sheet deflector helped a TON with temps. This winter I'm going to make some permanent changes.

 

Canadian bacon is on its 6th day of cure. Haven't pulled it out to look at it but there is lots of good juice accumulating in each bag to help an even brine/cure. I have a feeling this is going to be pretty great stuff.

 

Meh, trim most of the fat cap off prior to cooking and then cook it fat side down. The fat molecules are too big to absorb into the muscle that is the pork butt. It doesn't baste itself with the fat cap. The juices come from the collagen inside the muscles rendering.

 

Other reason to trim the fat cap is that the rub gets on and into the meat, not run off with the fat. Maybe he meant trimmed fat cap

 

I also do fat side down. Helps buffer the temps from the direct setup of my egg smoker, and if you smoke fat side up you're going to lose all that bark when the fat renders out of you do it right and cook it up to around 200 internal.

 

Yup that too. I leave some fat on mine. I also score across the meat with a knife in 2 directions to give more surface area for rub and eventually bark.